Empathy Pt. 3

It is here, Empathy part 3. I don't know if this will be out on Wednesday as I begin writing this because it might be a hefty post that I want to go back and edit and make it nicer than I usually do, we'll see. I did, just yesterday, at the time of writing this, finish The Fifth Vital by Mike Majlak. This book was absolutely profounding and is tied for first for my favorite books. Viscerally speaking, it is my favorite book. While I am not, was not, and never planned on being an addict, I could relate to many of the things Mike wrote in his book due to circumstances and challenges I've faced, however, Mike understood that everyone reading this book probably wouldn't be an addict, not everyone that read the book would have a mental illness, so he took time to describe what things felt like for him for the people that haven't been through what he went through. The reason he did this is like I have said in part 1 and part 2, people don't understand what they haven't been through.

"It seemed to me that people on the outside never quite understand what it felt like to "hurt." I'd tried to explain it like this: "Imagine the worst case of the flu you've ever had. Picture tormenting body aches, excruciating cramps... Your nose gushes fluid, your eyes sting and burn, your skin crawls with the sensation of a thousand insects... You have explosive diarrhea... You can't even imagine getting a minute of sleep. Now multiply that feeling times ten.""(124, The Fifth Vital) There's a lot of dots there because... you should buy the book, I'm not writing the entire thing out, and second, it was vivid and a lot to type. Anyways, notice how he started: "It seemed to me that people on the outside never quite understand what it felt like to 'hurt.'" Empathy is hard. As I've said in the past two parts you can't step into shoes that you've never seen. If you don't know the shoes exist, you can't step into them, and if you think you know what shoes feel like after simply looking at them, that is not empathy, it is an assumption.

I said in the first post, the fact we suck at empath wasn't a fact, rather an opinion that I believed through experience. After listening to some podcasts from The Hiden Brain there is research to suggest this, notably, the hot-cold empathy gap which is research that shows you underestimate the effects of your biases on your ability to empathize. For example, how often do you look back on your past self and think, "I was stupid." Probably often, it's quite normal. However, what this shows is that you lack empathy for even yourself, so good luck with other people's experiences that you haven't experienced. There's a ton more research on our lapses on complete empathy, but also research on our ability to emotionally empathize, so not, it is not completely impossible, or un-doable (not sure how to spell that), heck, studies show that even psychopaths can feel empathy, they just prefer not to. And like many things, I'm sure empathy is relative, some people are likely better than others, and knowing myself... I suck at empathy, so maybe that's why I said you can't do it, haha.

Another point I want to make on empathy is that it seems to me that the more pain you experience in life, the better you are at empathy. You judge people less, you are more willing to listen to people, you are affected less by that hot-cold empathy gap. My belief gets affirmed a little when I see Mike write, "My addiction and surrounding trauma have taught me endless valuable lessons about empathy for others..."(267, The Fifth Vital) I don't know how I feel about this, because I'm not going to encourage people to go get heartbroken, depressed, drug-addicted, or anything of the sort, so it's strange. However, a workaround comes to mind, pain is the stipulation in evolution, in gaining wisdom, there are controlled amounts of pain that you can allow into your life that will help you feel some pain, gain some empathetic ability, wisdom, and discipline. These are small things: cold showers, sleeping on the floor, fasting, exercising consistently. These things can even be beneficial to you.

Finally, as I said in past posts, not only is there empathy, but there is sympathy. Try your best to empathize of course, but if you care, inquire. Ask questions, truly want to understand, and you can't do that in your own head, you have to go to the person/group, and ask them how they feel or why they feel the way they do. Sympathy and empathy are both important.

To conclude I say, it's interesting how I've evolved over the past few years through these posts. Which makes me think of how I've changed in my interactions with people... Those changes may not be as great as the blog posts, haha. Regardless, I hope you liked this post and highly encourage everyone to read The Fifth Vital by Mike Majlak, there will be an audio version soon if you don't like to read. However, thank you for reading this, I'll cya